Roosevelt Addressing an Interested Audience 96
Family Group Taken While Roosevelt Was Governor of New York 144
Roosevelt’s Arrival at Gardiner, Mont. 176
In Roosevelt, the statesman, still lived “Ted,” the boy. To see this fact in all its clearness one has only to let his thoughts go back to the period when Roosevelt was President and follow him on a camping expedition with his boys and their cousins, come from miles around to share in the expedition.
The beach is reached; the fishing poles are put out; the catch is brought in. Thereupon Roosevelt himself turns cook. It is a big job, for there are many boys and their appetites are keen; but the cook is equal to the task. Then night steals on them. The campfire grows to enormous proportions. Around it the boys sit, listening with breathless interest to the wonder tales of hunting and cow-punching that come from the President who for his boys’ sake has made himself a lad again.
As we recall this scene we remember that the sons of Roosevelt fought for righteousness in France. We recall, too, that campfires and roughly cooked food were the order of the day in the paths these and millions of other boys traveled, and we wonder if, as they bivouacked, there did not come to them the memory of those nights when as boys their father led them out on a hard trail and then, in night-wrapped woods, stood guard over them as they rolled themselves in their blankets and fell into that sound sleep which had no room for the terrible dreams war engenders.
It is when such pictures present themselves to our minds that we say to ourselves that Bayard Taylor wrote facts as well as poetry when he said:
“The bravest are the tenderest, The loving are the daring!”
If a person who knew nothing of Roosevelt’s antecedents were asked to express an opinion as to the type of boy he was, that person, reasoning from Roosevelt’s great vigor and the intensity with which he threw himself into outdoor pursuits, would say that he was a strong, healthy lad.
The reverse, however, is the case. From earliest infancy Theodore Roosevelt had been subject to attacks of asthma that weakened him physically and hindered his growth. He confesses that as a little fellow he was timid, and that when larger boys strove to exercise over him that domination which the boy of an older age thinks himself privileged to exercise over a younger lad, he was backward in opposing them. It was his physical weakness that prevented him from going to school and that led him to be placed under the instruction of various tutors.